"Are you sure?" she said.
"Quite!" he responded, confidently. "I know all Stafford's flirtations,
great and small: if there was anything serious he would tell me; and as
he hasn't--there isn't."
She laughed; the slow, soft laugh which made Howard think suddenly,
strangely, of a sleepy tigress he had once watched in a rajah's zoo, as
she lay basking in the sun: a thing of softness and beauty and--death.
"We've had a most amusing conversation, Mr. Howard," she said. "I don't
know when I've been so interested--or so tempted."
"Tempted?" He looked at her with a slow, expectant smile.
"Oh, yes," she murmured, turning her eyes upon him with a half-mocking
light in them. "You have forgotten that you have been talking to a
woman."
"I don't deny it," he said. "It's the finest compliment I could pay
you. But--after?"
"And that to a woman your account of your hero-friend is--a
challenge."
He nodded and paused, with his cigar half-way to his lips.
"I'm greatly tempted to accept it, do you know!" she said.
He laughed.
"Don't: you'll be vanquished. Is that too candid, too--brutal?" he
said.
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